Monolithic Power Systems (NASDAQ:MPWR) appoints Bernie Blegen as its permanent CFO after serving as interim CFO since March.

Blegen served as MPWR's corporate controller; before joining the company, he held various senior finance and executive accounting roles for other publicly traded technology companies, including Xilinx.

The Philadelphia Semi Index (SOXX+3%) has risen above $90 for the first time since July on a day the Nasdaq is up 1.5%. Helping out: Texas Instruments (TXN+10.4%) soundly beat Q3 estimates, reported positive growth for its analog and embedded processing (DSP/microcontroller) units in spite of a customer inventory correction, and (with the help of iPhone content gains) provided mostly above-consensus Q4 guidance.

Chip stocks also outperformed yesterday after Western Digital announced it's buying SanDisk, Lam Research announced it's buying KLA-Tencor, and CPU core giant ARM (ARMH+2.7%) beat Q3 revenue estimates (EPS slightly missed) with the help of a 20% Y/Y increase in ARM chip shipments to 3.6B, and stated it expects 2015 revenue to be in-line with market expectations.